71 - 18,050 MARSHALL, Ernest Clare, 1936- AN EXPLICATION OF WILLIAM JAMES' NEUTRAL MONISM AND SOME APPLICATIONS TO HIS PRAGMATISM. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1970 Philosophy University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED AN EXPLICATION OF WILLIAM JAMES' NEUTRAL MONISM AND SOME APPLICATIONS TO HIS PRAGMATISM DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Ernest Clare Marshall, B.A., A.M. ****** The Ohio State University 1970 Approved by Adviser Department of Philosophy ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to express appreciation for the life and work of William James, which have made possible this interesting endeavor. VITA December 23, 1936 . Born - Columbus, Ohio 1961 ................... B.S., Athens College Athens, Alabama 1963 ................... M.A., University of Mississippi 1962-1964 .............. Graduate student and teaching assistant, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1964-1970 .............. Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Philosophy iii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION..................................... 1 CHAPTER I ....................................... 8 Section I - James' Neutral Monism and the Substance Theory ............ 10 Section II - James1 Neutral Monism and Psychological Atomism ............ 22 Section III- James' Neutral Monism and Mentalism...................... 52 Section IV - James' Neutral Monism and Epistemological Dualism .......... 67 CHAPTER II ..................................... 81 Section I - Pure Experience as What is Known Immediately or Intuitively . 81 Section II - Pure Experience as the Given Order of Experience.............116 Section III- The Two Interpretations of Pure Experience Compared .......... 131 CHAPTER I I I ................................... 150 Section I - James' Neutral Monism and the Nature of Relations.............150 Section II - James' Neutral Monism and the Nature of the Mental and Physical . 162 Section III- James' View of Conceptual Cognation....................... 198 CHAPTER IV ........................................220 Section I - James' Pragmatic View of Meaning and M e t h o d .............220 Section II - James' Pragmatic Theory of Truth . 254 Section III- James' Neutral Monism and his P r a g m a t i s m ..................... 271 CONCLUSION .......................... 288 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................... 293 iv INTRODUCTION I The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to provide an explication of William James' philosophical theory of neutral monism, and second, to set his neutral monism in relation to at least a portion of the remainder of his philosophical thought. The second part of this paper's purpose is pursued in terms of James' pragmatism, that is, affinities are sought between his neutral monism and pragmatism. It is James' pragmatism which is selected for this purpose primarily because his pragmatism, on the one hand, is often considered to most typify his thought, but on the other, is often treated as if it had little connection with his neutral monism. (An implicit conten­ tion of this paper, however, is that both of these ways of viewing James' thought are in a sense incorrect.) II The first three chapters contain the exposition of James' neutral monism. Chapter Four is an exposition of his pragmatism and an attempt to bring James' neutral monism and pragmatism into some sort of illuminating juxtaposition. 1 Chapter I is a general discussion of James' neutral monism. The attempt is made to delineate this theory and differentiate it from others by explicating several nega­ tive claims which it implies, viz.: minds do not differ from physical things as two substances; they do not differ in virtue of being composed of different kinds of elements; they do not differ in virtue of their qualities; and they are not in every instance numerically distinct. Chapter II is a discussion of what seems the focal or fundamental element of James' neutral monism, viz., his y ' notion of pure experience. Two interpretations of this notion are presented and then compared, viz., that pure experience is that which, when cognized as such is cognized 'immediately or intuitively,' and that pure experience is the 'given order' of experience. It is concluded that the former of these two notions is the more essential to James' neutral monism. The purpose of the first two chapters is to show that James' neutral monism is genuinely 'neutral' (neither a quasi-idealism nor a quasi-materialism), and in what sense this is so. Chapter III is a discussion of the nature of the mental and physical orders, i.e., the nature of those rela­ tions in virtue of which a portion of pure experience assumes a mental or a physical nature. It is argued that portions of pure experience are mental when they occur as in 'continuous' relations which give rise to a perpetuation and progression, and that they are physical when they occur as terms in 'causal1 relations which are productive of sensible consequences. Chapter IV is a discussion of James' pragmatism and its affinities with his neutral monism. Of these affini­ ties which are discerned and discussed perhaps the most important is that as viewed against the background of James' neutral monism, his pragmatism is seen to be less 'humanistic' or 'tender-minded' than his formulations of the latter views might suggest. The experience which ter­ minates the process of confirming a concept is also the immediate or intuitive cognition of some portion of pure experience, and the process itself is one involving rela­ tions in virtue of which that portion of pure experience is also a portion of physical reality. Ill Regarding the first part of the paper's purpose the following might be said. Rather late in his life James wrote a series of essays which seem to give a new tenor to his thought. What seems to be the best of these essays, at least with regard to what they reveal as to the new direction of his thought, are those written between July, 1904, and February, 1905, and published under the title of Essays in Radical Empiricism. These late essays are the mature fruit of James' thinking and an attempt to get his intellectual house in order. Yet, this work was largely left unfinished due to James' death in 1910. What seems the central theme or thesis of these essays and their most original and provocative conception— if not also the most original and provocative contribution of James' writ­ ings as a whole— is James' neutral monism. In view of such considerations as these the project of this paper is one which can be both challenging in its endeavor and significant in its results. The second part of the paper's purpose involves showing that James' neutral monism is in a sense basic to his pragmatism, that his neutral monism, though a latter deposition as it were, is nonetheless a deeper stratum of 1 his thought. It is, however, consistent with this view­ point that in some other sense James' pragmatism is the more fundamental position. But it might be noted in this connection that James' pragmatism, by his own acknowledg­ ment, is not completely original with him, and that his presentation of it usually took the form of polemical essays and public lectures. It is thus indicated that James was primarily a champion of the cause of pragmatism rather than the source of its conception. There is thus some reason for supposing that James' pragmatism never became the focus or foundation of his completed thought. 5 IV Some comments are called for regarding the approach or procedure adopted in this paper. This paper is in­ tended to be expository rather than critical. The central concern is to state James’ views and not to sit in judgment on them. However, consistent with this purpose a variety of arguments have been employed. These may be grouped in the following way: I. Numerous passages from James' writings are quoted or referred to in order to show that either he does maintain or probably maintains a given view and to show in what that view consists. II. Passages from James' writings are either quoted or referred to in order to show that a given view attributed to James is logically consistent with other views that the passages reveal that he maintains or probably maintains. The thrust of the argument here is that if a given view attributed to James is consistent with other of his views it is all the more likely that James maintains that view. III. Arguments are sometimes used which are to show that a given view attributed to James has at least a prima facea cogency. The thrust of the argument is that if a given view attributed to James is inherently plausible it is all the more likely that he does in fact maintain that view. IV. Arguments are sometimes used which are to show that an objection which might be raised regarding a given view attributed to James is unsound. The thrust of such argu­ ments is to show that the given view attributed to James has a prima facea cogency, but also, in rebutting the objection to show that it is founded on a misconception of what James' view is, and thereby, to further explicate that view. V. Historical comparisons are frequently used as an expository device. That is to say, a given view attri­ buted to James may be discussed in terns of how it compares with one held by some other figure in the history of phi­ losophy. These comparisons are usually backwards rather than forwards, so to speak, it being assumed that James should not be held accountable in any way for subsequent developments in the history of philosophy. Further, most of these comparisons are with views held by classical empiricists. James' thinking was of course apparently influenced by and had it affinities with other historical currents of thought.